Artificial sugars; a common dietary food additive that is responsible for many common illnesses according to this informative video. Diet coke for many years has been a preferred drink for dieters. Other artificial sugars such as aspartame or stevia are now popular however they can affect your body in ways you would never imagine such as Weight gain - Since the sweetener has no nutritional content, it affects the hormones that regulate hunger and as a result, you eat more than you may normally do, causing weight gain and fat formation. Inflammation - This is the cause of diseases such as heart disease, cancer and type 2 diabetes and it may also be the reason for arterial dissections. This is different than what many of us hear from our doctors but even drug companies are looking at improving our health by reducing inflammation. Gut microbe damage - The overgrowth of the wrong types of gut microbes which are important for our assimilation of vitamins while filtering out substances that may cause immune reactions is linked to artificial sugars as well. These changes lead to problems such as type 2 diabetes and the food pyramid of the 1990's that suggested that low fat everything is a good idea, caused many people to eat products that were loaded with sugars and artificial sweeteners which were inherently bad for us. This had resulted in the large growth of diabetics in our society, many of whom are now insulin dependent. Check out the video below. Knowing this going forward, you may want to drink plain water, or unsweetened ice tea, and avoid adding sugar in things such as coffee. If you are habituated to sugar and the whites (bleached flower, sugar, salt for example), you can naturally reduce inflammation in your body and improve your health, without spending your income on medications that can be harmful as well as expensive.